A MOTHER-of-two has told how she, her son and two relatives escaped death by inches after a giant tree collapsed on their car in high winds.

Hairdresser Jane Bracey had stopped at the traffic lights in Queen's Park Road, outside St Michael's Primary School, Bamford, when a giant sycamore in the school grounds crashed on to the roof of her Citroen Saxo.

Jane, two-year-old Cameron, mother-in-law Margaret Bracey and her 80-year-old great aunt, May Spooner managed to scramble for safety without a scratch.

"It all seems like a bad dream now," said 32-year-old Jane, from Martins Field, Norden.

"There was no warning. I had just stopped at the lights and put the handbrake on when the tree collapsed on top of us. I can't believe that we escaped from something like that without a scratch."

Cameron was sleeping in the back of the car.

"Luckily, it doesn't seem to have affected him at all," said Jane. "My great aunt was in the back with him and she and my mother-in-law were very upset."

Jane, who had been taking a right turn to go back home to Norden, believes that they could have been killed if she had been in the left hand lane.

She added: "If we had been turning towards Bury we would have got the full force of the tree trunk. Just 10 minutes earlier I had been passing St Michael's Primary and the children were still in the playground.

"They could have easily been walking under that tree when it fell."

Speaking after the Friday morning incident, PC Steve Warburton of Rochdale traffic unit said: "The car was in the outside lane to turn right, so it did not take the full force of the tree. If it had been in the other lane it could have been much worse."

A council tree surgeon said that the tree was found to be rotten at the roots.

He said: "There were no outward physical signs that the tree was rotten and going to come down, it was just one of those things."